One Doctor Down, How Many More?

By Richard Lacayo

WHEN SHE HEARD LAST WEEK that a doctor had been gunned down outside an abortion clinic in Florida, B.J. Isaacson-Jones was shaken -- but not surprised. At the St. Louis, Missouri, clinic where she is president, staff members always vary their routes home from work. Mail is opened only by employees trained by a bomb and arson squad to detect suspicious envelopes or packages. "Those of us providing abortion services feel very vulnerable," she says. Even more so since December 1991, when a man in a ski mask opened fire with a sawed-off shotgun at a clinic in Springfield, Missouri. Two people were wounded, including the clinic's office manager, who is now paralyzed. The gunman, who walked calmly away from the scene, has not been apprehended.

In the eyes of abortion-rights activists, the killing of Dr. David Gunn is simply the culmination of years of violence, vandalism and harassment against clinics all around the country. Far from denouncing his murder as the work of a lone extremist, some of the more militant antiabortion groups warned that more violence was likely to follow. "What do you expect when the government and the President do all they can to crush peaceful, nonviolent protests?" asks the Rev. Joseph Foreman of Missionaries to the Preborn, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "We will not be outraged over the one death and not the other 4,000 precious human beings that were killed today by abortion," he says. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, said he regretted the act but noted that, after all, Dr. Gunn was a murderer of babies.

The rising violence may reflect in part the sense of stalemate among antiabortion groups. Now that the Supreme Court has stopped short of overturning Roe v. Wade and a pro-choice Administration rules Washington, clinic operators fear that frustrated pro-life militants will become even more aggressive and threatening. According to the National Abortion Federation, a Washington-based advocacy group, in 1992 alone there were 116 cases of clinic vandalism, 12 reported incidents of arson, 9 cases of attempted arson, 5 burglaries and a bombing.

This year is not shaping up any better. In Corpus Christi, Texas, last month, arsonists burned from one of the city's abortion clinics, along with four neighboring businesses in the same building. A new tactic is to spray the interior of clinics with butyric acid, a chemical that ruins carpets and furnishings and leaves behind a revolting stench. During one night last week, five San Diego clinics were made a stinking mess. "It smells like rancid meat and a sewer together. It's awful," says Ashley Phillips, whose WomanCare Clinic was one of those attacked.

Property damage, bad as it is, is not what frightens clinic workers the most. Doctors, their staffs and families find themselves stalked, harassed and threatened over the phone. After he was confronted several years ago by a man who threatened to cut off his fingers, Dr. Buck Williams, the only doctor who provides abortions in South Dakota, got a licensed .38 revolver. He jokes grimly about it now: "I figured if I had only one finger left, I could use it to pull the trigger." After he learned about the Pensacola killing, Williams upgraded his weapon to a .45.

Even the children of clinic workers are targets. Lisa Merritt is a counselor at a clinic in Melbourne, Florida. She says that last month her 13-year-old son Justin was approached by a woman and a teenage girl who told him they were thinking of moving into the apartment complex where he and his mother live. A day later, the girl phoned to ask Justin to join her at a Burger King. The girl picked him up in a car driven by a woman in her 30s whom she identified as a friend.

At the restaurant, the pair suddenly produced a Bible and asked Justin if he was aware that both he and his mother were going to burn in hell. According to Merritt, they identified themselves as members of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue and asked the boy whether he had names of patients at his mother's clinic. Justin refused to answer, and bolted for home. "We're all tight as guitar strings around here," Merritt says. "I can't believe they came after my son."

Pro-life organizations were divided last week about how to respond to Gunn's killing. Even groups that have supported clinic blockades issued unequivocal condemnations. "To shoot and kill a human being in the name of saving human life is grotesque," said the Rev. Richard D. Land, who heads the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. But more militant outfits played rhetorical games, dancing around the crime. Don Treshman, national director of Houston-based Rescue America -- which had mounted protests at Gunn's home -- called the doctor's death "unfortunate." Then he added, with a logic long familiar among extortionists: "This will have a chilling effect on this business."

The murder in Pensacola has already led to the resignation of two doctors at the clinic in Melbourne. Antiabortion groups had featured them on wanted posters similar to those that Gunn had appeared on before his death. Clinics elsewhere are finding themselves compelled to take expensive precautions against attack. The Houston chapter of Planned Parenthood is spending $100,000 on security devices for its new headquarters. Last week their clinic in Kansas City, Kansas, hired an armed guard.

After Gunn's murder, representatives from three abortion-rights groups held a joint press conference with two Democratic Congressmen to call for an FBI probe of the antiabortion movement. Congress is expected to speed up action on a bill that would make it a federal crime, punishable by up to three years in prison, to blockade an abortion clinic. At a meeting with the President on Thursday, members of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues urged him to support legislation that would strengthen federal antistalking laws. The President, says Colorado Democrat Patricia Schroeder, "was fully in agreement that this was a real crisis."

A federal law protecting clinics could give stronger authority to the FBI and other agencies to investigate attacks. The record of state law-enforcement efforts so far has been mixed. In the 28 cases of arson and fire bombings against clinics from 1990 to 1992, only one suspect has been arrested. Earlier this month, representatives of the Feminist Majority Foundation met with Florida attorney general Robert Butterworth. Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the foundation, says he refused their request to seek a state court injunction that would keep protesters away from clinics.

"We've been warning them for weeks that something like this was going to happen, but they just won't listen," Spillar complains. "They say it's a local law-enforcement issue. We know that's not true. We've had cooperation from the offices of the attorneys general of Texas and New York when these kinds of things started."

Meanwhile, clinics are bracing themselves for another season of assaults. Melbourne is now the site of a 12-week training camp, organized by Operation Rescue, where about 25 men are learning tactics for blockades. Pro-choice activists who are monitoring the group contend that the men are also being instructed in how to stalk and harass. The convergence of pro-life forces has placed great strain on the area's sole abortion clinic, where about 30 protesters have been picketing for the past month. Merritt, the clinic counselor whose son was harassed, says when the murder of the doctor was announced to the protesters, they took up a chant: "One down! How many more?" That same question is now on the minds of many others.

With reporting by Deborah Fowler/Houston, Julie Johnson/Washington and Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles